Do You Take Song Requests?
by Pirateweasel
Summary: The Joker has a question for one of the other inmates in Arkham Asylum. I do not own the rights to any songs/artists/stories referenced in this work. I only own my hat.
1. Chapter 1

A/N-as always, I own nothing but my hat. The song is by the fabulously fun group, The Four Postmen; in other words, it's not mine.

Additional A/N-This story was originally meant only as a one-shot, until one of my friends read it on my laptop one night as said, grinning..."This is great! When's the next chapter coming out?" Wulfgar, Dawn-Marie...this one is all your fault, you fabulous betas, you...

* * *

The light in the cell block came on with a low, buzzing hum. It would slowly work its way into you throughout the day, until you were certain that when you laid down to sleep at night and the lights shut off, that buzzing hum would still be inside your bones; a faint vibration that would make its way into your dreams and taint them with a film of sound that kept you from truly resting.

In his cell, the Joker blinked his eyes open to see the familiar cinder block and concrete walls that surrounded him; their surface pitted from time and the efforts of previous occupants to leave something behind to mark that they had existed in this place.

Now, _that_ really was a joke.

Existence…in this place? No such thing.

No one existed here. They were merely waiting, their bodies in storage while their minds planned.

And such plans! Escape, certainly. But also theft, murder, revenge, fear, torment, and _FUN._ After all, the Joker reasoned, if it wasn't fun...what was the point?

The guards were walking down the aisle between the rows of cells, calling out to the inmates around them.

Get up!

_Why?_

Can't sleep all day…get out of those beds and get moving….

_What's the point? We aren't moving_ anywhere…

In the surrounding cells the Joker could hear groans, whined complaints, and a few curses and threats as inmates began to rise from their bunks and move about their cramped cells. Space was always at a premium in Arkham Asylum, and when you didn't dare put more than one inmate in a cell…you made the cells half the size of the typical two-inmate cells.

One nearby cell, however, only had a few coughs and some throat-clearing coming from it as its occupant began the day's routine.

The cell-block's songbird.

No one really knew why she was down here, they had never heard of her when they were out in the 'real world', the world beyond the walls of Arkham Asylum; and none of the newer inmates—the ones who had joined their ranks after the songbird's arrival—had heard of her either.

If they hadn't heard of her before, they all heard her now.

She sang.

All day, every day. You never could tell what the next song would be, or if it would be the previous song again, like a cassette or CD stuck on repeat. Pop, country and western, blues, old torch songs, jazz, even gospel came from the songbird's cell. The week that she had sung nothing but Disney songs had been kind of hard to take. If 'It's a Small World' had been sung one more time...well, it would have been very messy on the cell block. And now she was getting ready to sing, again.

In a strange mood, the Joker leaned towards the songbird's cell.

"Hey," he called. "Do you take song requests?"

The humming that had been one of the signs that the songbird was warming up for her day's performance for her captive audience stopped. There was a moment of quiet as he waited for a reply.

"What?"

"I asked if you take song requests," the Joker repeated, patiently. Honestly, the songbird had no idea how hard it was to act this calm and rational. It went against everything that he felt should be normal.

"I heard you; I was just surprised." The voice was quiet for a moment before she spoke again. "Why do you want to know?"

The Joker thought for a moment. Why did he want to know?

Asking her if she took song requests had been one of those 'spur of the moment, why not?' decisions that he often made. It wasn't that her singing was bad—not something that he would ever have paid to go listen to, probably no one else would have either—but it wasn't like she had a voice that was screechy or painful to listen to, and she could carry a tune and stay on key.

"Is the reason, um, important?" he asked, tilting his head in the direction of her cell. "I just wanted to ask; that's all."

"Hmm."

There was nothing more from the other cell for a while; and the Joker was thinking that if he wasn't going to have his question answered, at least he had found out how to get the songbird to stop singing.

"What's the request?"

The question surprised him. Was she considering it?

"Chainsaw Juggler," he said, naming the first song that popped into his head. Not that she would know it, almost nobody knew of it and he'd never found anyone who had heard of it that knew the words—

"By The Four Postmen?"

She knew the song? Oh, this was good.

"Yeah," he answered, drawing the word out a bit. "That's uh, that's the one…"

"The last time I sang that song, Dr. Chilton transferred facilities," she told him. "Went to work with serial killers in Baltimore, I was told. Of course, it may be because I sang only that song for approximately three weeks in a row…"

This was better than good; this was wonderful.

"I'll take the request."

The Joker could almost hear the smile in her voice. What did that smile look like? Was it as wide as his? For that matter, what did she look like?

She continued speaking. "Who knows…" she was saying now. "…maybe we can get a sing-along started; have the others here follow the bouncing ball. If you think you could find something to bounce..."

Oh, yeahhh… He could find something to bounce. So many things bounced…heads, hearts, livers… Okay, maybe not livers. But there were _plenty _of options roaming the halls of Arkham.

And then he heard it, slowly swelling in volume until it rang and echoed down the hall of the cell block; the sound rebounding from the pitted grey concrete walls that were never touched by the sun.

_What ever happened to the Chainsaw Juggler? He was a good friend of mine. And where did you learn to kiss like that said the man to his German Shepherd…_

* * *

A/N-just a little plot bunny that I woke up with. I had to trap it before the others saw it and started arguing over who gets written first...


	2. Sing or Scream

A/N-Before reading this, I recommend that you look up images for Gericault's 'Anatomical Pieces', and Goya's 'Black Paintings'-specifically 'Saturn'. The work is likely to make a bit more-if slightly more horrifying-sense if you do. Have fun...

* * *

The flashing strobe lights from the emergency vehicles outside the building reached in through the room's windows; illuminating a nightmarish scene that reminded him of a cross between Goya's 'Black Paintings' and Gericault's 'Anatomical Pieces'.

_Why had Alfred ever believed that he should be exposed to classical art when he was younger? He had seen more things resembling this since he had pulled on the mask and cowl than that young boy would have wanted to know existed…_

The reason wasn't the bodies that lay—most in one piece, although at least one was missing a limb or two—like driftwood that had washed up against the walls. Nor was it the blood that was painted in broad swaths, strokes and splattered marks over the furniture and walls, soaking into the carpet until it squished around his boots on the rug and made slick trails that were settling into the joins of the floorboards.

No; it was the figure that crouched—humming quietly—in the middle of the room.

The police had been called to the building when a tenant in the building across the street reported hearing screaming…a lot of screaming. When you considered that the neighborhood was practically controlled by a mob, the noise would have needed to be prolonged and incredibly loud for someone to decide it was worth the risk of calling the police.

His normally silent steps brought him closer…and then there was a slight scuffing sound as his left boot slid in a small puddle of blood.

The humming cut off abruptly as the crouched figure tilted her head to hear him better.

Batman froze and waited. In front of him, a head turned slowly in his direction. A hoarse but quiet voice asked, "Why are you here?"

The person in the center of the room twisted their body to be able to look at Batman clearly.

It was a woman…a girl, really. She didn't look old enough to be out of college. Hair hung to brush its tips against her shoulders in thin ropes that were sticky with congealing blood. There was so much blood soaked into her hair that Batman could not have identified the color even if the room had been brightly lit. Every move of her head caused her hair to paint bloody smears against the skin of her face and neck. Blue eyes stared up at him from a face that was almost a mask of red, the blood drying into the creases and pores of her skin; flaking away from the corners of her eyes and mouth.

The girl looked up from where she still crouched on her heels—legs bare and torn t-shirt and simple cotton panties stained with even more blood—and repeated the question.

"Why are you here?"

She looked up at him for a moment longer, and then her eyes dropped down to her hands. More blood was drying on her hands, causing the skin of her left hand to stick in tacky patches to the straight razor that she was clutching. She looked at the razor in her hand, holding it up as though she had just noticed it, and said, "I think I made a mess…I'll be in trouble if my parents find out. I'm supposed to keep my room clean."

Are you going to tell on me?" She sounded like a small child, worried about the possibility of being scolded and sent to bed without supper.

Batman looked around the room. Dead eyes stared back at him emptily from slack faces; some bore marks from a blade—probably the razor she was still holding—others held nothing more than emotions; anger, disbelief, fear. Many of the faces he saw were familiar; well known to him as members of one of Gotham's worst mobs. Looking at the condition of the young woman before him, Batman was starting to get a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There were several reasons why a girl who should be worried about nothing worse than her next college exam would be covered in blood wearing nothing but a torn t-shirt and panties. He couldn't think of any that would have ended well for her.

"What did you do?" he asked her, his voice deep and gravelly.

"I made a mess," she told him again.

"Why? Why did you make a mess?"

She scrunched her face up in distaste. "They weren't nice. I was at a tea party with my friends…we were having fun, and there was music. My tea tastes funny. So does Sally's and Cici's. I don't like the way it tastes now. And then the boys said we should go with them to a party. I don't like this tea party. They made Sally and Cici cry; and then they were mean to me…"

Her gaze grew unfocused. "They were mean to me; so I taught them how to sing. Look!" She held up the razor suddenly, causing Batman to take a step back out of her reach. The girl didn't seem to notice as she began to wave the straight razor around in the air in front of her. "I'm a conductor! They sang SO MUCH when I showed them how…" The girl began to hum again, keeping time in the air with the blade in her hand.

The girl was mad…whatever had happened in this room; her mind had apparently fled from dealing with it. The thing to do now was keep her calm, and get her down to the waiting emergency response vehicles so that they could get her some help.

"It's time to go," he told her; the deep gravel of his voice strangely gentle. "Let's get you to someone who can help you…"

She stopped humming and waving her razor through the air, letting her hand fall to her side.

"Go? I can't go…this is my room, where the boys sing to me." She looked lost for a moment. "If I leave, they won't sing anymore. I'll have to sing for them until they come and sing to me again…"

"Why do you have to sing for them?" Batman asked, curious as to the answer to his question.

Her eyes grew crafty as she narrowed them slightly, a small smile growing on her face.

"Because," she told him, her manner that of someone confiding a great secret, "if they don't sing to me…then they scream to me, instead."

Batman felt a finger of ice trail down his spine at her words. "It's time to go," he said again, his voice growing harder. "Put down the blade and come with me…"

The girl looked up at him before rising as smooth and gracefully as a cobra in front of a snake charmer.

"I don't want to go." She smiled up at the masked face before her. "I like it here; we can stay and sing all we want…Don't you want to sing?"

"No." Batman's voice was unyielding now, his instincts warning him of danger. "I don't sing. Put down the blade. We're leaving now."

The young woman's face distorted at his words.

"I'll show you how to sing!" she screamed as she launched herself at Batman, bringing the straight razor's blade up to slash up across his chest and neck.

Only his quick reflexes and training allowed him to react in time, moving back so that the blade came perilously close but did not touch him. He brought up his gauntlet up to block the next slashing attack, and then struck her in the head with his other fist; his hand catching her in the temple and causing her to drop like a sack of meat—_butchered meat staring up at him with empty eyes from the corners of the room…I showed them how to sing—_sprawled on the floor.

Batman checked her breathing to insure that she would not come to harm if unattended for a few moments; and then pulled her hands behind her back and fastened them with restraints to insure that no harm would come to the ones that would be dealing with her next.

* * *

Less than a minute later…

"Gordon…"

Jim Gordon whirled around, almost hitting the police car he had been standing behind in his haste.

"Jesus! Do you have to sneak up on me every time?" The police lieutenant looked harried and worn as he glanced back towards the building that Batman had just been in.

"We've got reports of screaming coming from the building; and it's apparently been used a mob safe house. I've got men still trying to break down the door and no one can find a supervisor or manager to let us know if there's another way in—"

"There's an entrance in the building to the right of it…a connecting door 87 feet past the main entrance," Batman said, interrupting him. "Sixth floor, third room. You have what looked like five dead mobsters, maybe more. There's a young woman there…"

Gordon," there was a pause. "The woman…she needs help—professional help. I think that she's had a mental break."

And Gordon…keep her restrained."

The lieutenant looked over at one of the officers that were on the radio trying to get a building supervisor. He waved the officer over, and then turned back to where Batman was standing.

The only thing there now was the mouth of an empty alleyway, trash and discarded paper being slowly pushed along in it by the sullen breeze.

"I hate it when he does that," Jim Gordon grumbled under his breath, and then began walking towards the young officer he had signaled a few seconds earlier.

* * *

A/N-next up, the world's worst sing-along...eventually. I promise.

New information re: the World's Worst Sing-Along!

Send me your recommendation for the song choice for the 'World's Worst Sing-Along' AKA, what would an asylum filled with rioting insane killers sing as they make as their murdering way up and down the halls?

Full credit for song choice will be given to whoever recommended the chosen song.


End file.
